illustration of this rule of probability in matters beyond the Bible. As
very fair ones, take Mahometanism and Romanism. And first of the former.

At the commencement of the seventh century, or a little previously to
that era, we know that a fierce religion sprang up, promulgated by a
false prophet. I wish briefly to show that this was antecedently to have
been expected.

In a moral point of view, the Christian world, torn by all manner of
schisms, and polluted by all sorts of heresies, had earned for the human
race, whether accepting the gospel or refusing it, some signal and
extensive punishment at the hands of Him, who is the Great Retributor as
well as the Munificent Rewarder. In a physical point of view, the
civilized kingdoms of the earth had become stagnant, arguing that
corrupt and poisonous calm which is the herald of a coming tempest. The
heat of a true religion had cooled down into lukewarm disputations about
nothings, scholastical and casuistic figments; whilst at the same time
the prevalence of peaceful doctrines had amalgamated all classes into a
luxurious indolence. Passionate Man is not to be so satisfied; and the
time was fully come for the rise of some fierce spirit, who should
change the tinsel theology of the crucifix for the iron religion of the
sword: who should blow in the ears of the slumbering West the shrill
war-blast of Eastern fervencies; who should exchange the dull rewards of
canonization due to penance, or an after-life voluntary humiliation
under pseudo-saints and angels, for the human and comprehensible joys of
animal appetite and military glory: who should enlist under his banner
all the frantic zeal, all the pent-up licentiousness, all the
heart-burning hatreds of mankind, stifled either by a positive
barbarism, or the incense-laden cloud of a scarcely-masked idolatry.